


My Soulmate is a Green-Eyed Monster

by River9Noble



Series: Green-Eyed Monsters Rule the (Soul) World [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Batfamily (DCU), Cass isn't Bruce's daughter, Dead Robins, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Humor, M/M, Minor Tim Drake/Kon-El | Conner Kent, Romance, Steph is an adult, blink and you'll miss it Jason/Cass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:33:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26556652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/River9Noble/pseuds/River9Noble
Summary: Steph hopes that her soulmark will appear on her twenty-first birthday, but when it does, she wishes it hadn't.Bruce has been waiting almost a quarter of a century for his soulmark. Finally getting it should be the happiest moment of his life. Instead, it's the worst.An Enemies to Lovers Soulmates AU.
Relationships: Stephanie Brown/Bruce Wayne
Series: Green-Eyed Monsters Rule the (Soul) World [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1944724
Comments: 16
Kudos: 51
Collections: Focus on Female Characters





	My Soulmate is a Green-Eyed Monster

**Author's Note:**

> Cass wasn't adopted by Bruce in this AU.

_**The Soulmark** _

* * *

Steph sat alone in her apartment on the eve of her twenty-first birthday, as was tradition.

It might not appear at all.

She'd be lucky if it did.

But even if it didn't, most people's soulmarks appeared by age twenty-six, Steph tried to reassure herself. Less than ten percent of the population had to wait more than five years, and only one percent didn't have their soulmark by age thirty.

She'd be fine.

It would be fine.

No matter what happened, it would be fine. Steph could handle it. There'd be no need to panic.

Tim and Conner and Jason and Cass were ready and waiting to take her out drinking tomorrow if she didn't get her mark tonight and everything would be just fine. Steph would get through it and her friends would help her.

But as the last sixty seconds to midnight ticked down, Steph's stomach began to roil in a way that argued against her increasingly flimsy self-assurances until, with five seconds to go, Steph was not only nauseous but hyper-ventilating and seeing spots.

The clock turned. Her phone chimed. And Steph's hip burned like the devil as a signature sizzled its way across her skin.

Big, blubbery tears of relief came pouring out of Steph's eyes and she choked out huge, heaving sobs for a good two minutes before she even made an attempt to wipe her face off and read the name.

Because it wasn't like the name was the important aspect, in the grand scheme of things. Whoever it was, was assured to be Steph's soulmate. No, the agonizing terror that everyone on the planet had to suffer through was the uncertainty of when their soulmark might appear.

And Steph's had come; it had come on her twenty-first birthday at the first opportunity and Steph didn't have to wait in uncertain misery, and after every shitty thing that had gone wrong in her life up to this point, the gratitude that Steph felt towards the Universe for letting one tiny piece of her puzzle go right and be easy was overwhelming.

Until she looked at the name.

* * *

"What the hell," Batman grunted as he suddenly stumbled mid-kick when a burning pain sliced through his hip.

Had something pierced his armor? It would take quite a bullet to pierce kevlar, he thought to himself as he regained his balance and finished knocking out the henchmen of the moment, and Jason hadn't mentioned any such bullets hitting the streets recently.

Indeed, when Batman glanced down at his side, the Batsuit was intact.

Batman finished dealing with the Riddler's crew, zip-tying them and phoning it in to the police, before making his way back to the Batmobile. Behind the privacy of its tinted windows and locked doors, Bruce carefully undid his armor's clasps and eased the side of his suit down to inspect his hip, which was still in searing pain as if he'd been branded.

Bruce's breath caught in his throat and he almost choked on the flashlight he held in his mouth when he saw the glowing gold signature. His surprise caused him to drop the light, though, before he could read the name and he had to fumble for it on the floor of the car before he was able to learn the identity of the person who he'd been waiting for more than twenty years to meet.

When Bruce finally got his shaking hands back on the light and forced his wet eyes to focus, a heart-shattering disbelief was swiftly followed by seething anger.

* * *

"No," Steph whispered to herself, staring shakily down at the name on her hip.

"No, no, no, _NO!"_ she suddenly screamed, kicking her feet out onto the floor and melting down like she'd just turned two instead of twenty-one.

Of all the cruel, twisted jokes that Fate could play on her - after what she'd been through - after what she'd been through with _him -_ Steph's tears and rage consumed her as she screamed and kicked and pounded at the floor until her neighbor one floor down begin banging a broom handle against their ceiling to shut her up.

* * *

Jason and Cass made it to her apartment first.

"Ice cream," Cass said, holding up a paper bag stuffed with several pints worth.

Her best friend patted her on the head before making her way to the kitchen to procure spoons. Jason sat down across from Steph on the floor and looked at her with unmingled pity and horror.

"We hate each other," Steph whispered hollowly.

"I know," Jason said grimly. "You, with good reason. Him, not so much."

"It's not fair," Steph said, her eyes empty and haunted. "Soulmarks aren't supposed to be wrong. They're never wrong, Jason," she said. "Why do I get the one broken soulmark in the universe?"

Jason sighed but couldn't give her an answer. He looked up as Cass dropped down beside him, leaning forward to push a spoon into Steph's hand before giving one to Jason and leaving the rest on the floor in anticipation of Tim and Conner’s arrival.

"Choose," Cass nudged her with her foot, sliding the bag of ice cream towards Steph.

"Did they have peanut butter cup?" Steph asked listlessly.

Cass nodded and pulled it out for her before grabbing the pistachio for herself and handing Jason the Chunky Monkey.

"Maybe…" Jason said slowly, "maybe you and Bruce could've been soulmates if you were just Steph Brown and he was just Bruce Wayne?" he wondered. "If we hadn't done all the superhero shit on top of it?"

"I don't know," Steph mumbled miserably. "I've never felt like I had anything at all in common with him. And shouldn't soulmarks know better, anyway? And take everything we've done into account?"

Cass shrugged in defeat and Jason grimly nodded.

"You would think," he said heavily just before the door opened and Tim and Conner barreled into the apartment.

"Oh my God, Steph," Conner moaned in utter sympathy, not only his eyes but his whole face a picture of shocked, abject dismay.

"You poor, poor thing," Tim said in reverential horror, carefully stepping over the ice cream before plopping down next to Steph and wrapping her up in a big hug.

"He's so _old,_ " Conner groaned. "Even if he is a hot DILF."

"Excuse me?" Tim sputtered, looking over at his soulmate.

"Well, not as hot as _you_ , babe," Conner soothed, scooping up their pints of ice cream along with the spoons and making his way over to sit next to a ruffled Tim.

"The fact that you think he's hot at all is nauseating," Jason said, looking as green as Cass's pistachio ice cream.

Cass wrinkled her nose and nodded in agreement.

"How he looks isn't exactly the problem," Steph said tightly. "Or his age. I mean, the age thing is weird, but less so than everything else that's so horribly, fucking wrong with this equation."

"Why me….?" she moaned, feeling the tears start up again.

Cass reached forward and scooped up a spoonful of peanut butter ice cream to pop into her friend's mouth.

* * *

"Why me?" Batman rasped out in the solitude of the Batmobile, his chest heaving with rage and pain and bitterness, so much bitterness towards a universe that had not only seen fit to rip his parents away from him at age seven, but to make him wait almost a quarter of a century to meet his soulmate, only to discover that she was the one person - the _one person_ \- who Bruce actively, positively, could not stand to be around.

 _I wonder if hating each other can make two people soulmates,_ Bruce thought with irritation. _Because that's the only thing we could possibly have in common._

* * *

The last thing that Steph wanted to do was talk to Babs about it, so she did the mature thing and lied.

"Did you get your soulmate?" Oracle asked eagerly when Steph showed up in their Batgirl lair the day after her birthday.

"No," Steph said, and at least the sadness wasn't something that she had to fake.

"Oh, Steph, I'm sorry," Babs said, wheeling up close and reaching her arms out to give the younger woman a hug. "It'll happen," Babs gently encouraged.

"Yeah," Steph muttered dejectedly.

It wouldn't, but Babs didn't need to know that.

* * *

It was a full four days after her birthday before Batman bothered to find her on patrol.

Steph glanced up from her rooftop perch as he stalked over to her.

"So…" the Bat said uncomfortably.

Batgirl was silent.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Bruce said heavily.

"What is there to talk about?" Steph said quietly. "We don't even like each other."

"Right," Batman said shortly. "So that's it, then," he growled.

"Yep," Steph whispered to his disappearing silhouette.

And she didn't know what felt worse - her soulmate walking out of her life or the fact that she was only crying because it meant that she'd never have one.

Because God knows she didn't care that it was Bruce who was doing the walking, except for what he represented.

* * *

Bruce hated that his throat was tight as he left. He hated that he'd waited his whole life to meet his soulmate and that she was the worst possible person for him on the planet. He hated that she'd said out loud what they both knew to be true.

He hated most of all that part of him wanted to turn around and go back.

* * *

_**The Aftermath** _

* * *

"And which date might we be picking up tonight, sir?" Alfred asked as he pulled the limo away from Wayne Manor to transport billionaire Bruce Wayne to his latest gala event.

"No one," Bruce muttered to his feet.

"Sir?" Alfred said, raising an eyebrow.

"No one, Alfred," Bruce said with more irritation.

"I see, sir," Alfred murmured, stealing a glance at his son from the rearview mirror.

Bruce stared out of the window in gloomy silence.

* * *

Steph hated that she cried herself to sleep most nights, now. She hadn't cried so much in years, not since right after coming back from the dead, in fact.

Jason clearly felt guilty as fuck about it, and had even asked if she wanted to move back in with him and Cass for a while, but Steph had turned them down.

"I need some alone time," she'd said honestly, and Cass had nodded in silent understanding.

"I never thought bringing you back would end up so bad," Jason had mumbled to Steph, shamefacedly rubbing the back of his neck with a nervous hand.

Steph's eyes flashed with sympathy.

"You couldn't have known," she said honestly, wiping away some tears despite her words. "And for my mom, and Tim, and Cass…" she trailed off and swallowed hard. "I'm still glad for them that you brought me back," she said in a half-whisper.

Jason gave her an admiring look.

"You're a better person than all of us, Blondie," he said, pulling her into a tight hug.

"That must be why the Universe is punishing me," Steph grumbled into his shoulder.

Cass made a sad noise and wrapped her arms around Steph from behind to put her in the middle of a hug sandwich, and Steph sighed against her friends' embrace.

She did love them, and her mom, and Tim and Conner, and Babs, too, and lots of people lived happy, fulfilled lives without romantic love. They did. Steph would adjust in time, she valiantly lied to herself. Her mom managed to go on without her dad after he'd been sent to prison.

Of course, her mom was a pill addict. Former or current, depending on the month and her mood.

But lots of people coped, Steph tried to buoy herself up. Soulmates died. It happened.

Or some people (like Bruce, her brain tried to whisper) got stuck waiting for soulmates for years and years and years, and some (like Bruce) found what comfort they could in shallow hookups while their limbos stretched on, the promise of true love always hanging just over the horizon.

Not that Steph was one to judge, exactly, having had a baby at age fifteen. That had been quite the scandal. Sex before age twenty-one was a definite societal no-no. Hell, sex before aged thirty was actively frowned upon for the unsoulmarked.

After that, it wasn't exactly approved of, but it was more or less accepted as long as it didn't lead to actual romance. Because to be unavailable for your soulmate, when they finally aged into existence? There was no greater sin.

Although Steph supposed that rejecting your soulmate was pretty damnable, too.

But it wasn't like she'd wanted to. It's just that, it was B.

What the hell was she supposed to do? Try to have a conversation with the scowling, snarling, snarky beast who disapproved of the world in general, but Steph most of all? Yeah, as if that would have worked.

He'd clearly already made his mind up by the time he'd let four days of silence go by. And even if he'd tried, well, Steph couldn't honestly picture what B trying would look like. He was hideous. Mean. Cruel. Thoughtless. Callous. As evidenced by every single thing about him.

* * *

"So, you're not even going to try?" Jason yelled at Bruce a few weeks later before he'd even fully dismounted from his bike in the Batcave.

"Hello to you, too," Bruce said snarkily from the Batcomputer, where he was working on a case.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Jason demanded, storming over to Bruce and angrily sitting backwards in a chair. "Steph is amazing."

"Beg to differ," Bruce growled, giving Jason a look that threatened to put him back into the ground without the aid of a crowbar.

"You've waited your whole life for a soulmate, and you're going to spend the rest of it ignoring her because what? You're too damned arrogant to admit that you might have misjudged her?" Jason sneered at Bruce.

Damian paused on light toes and crouched down behind the Batcomputer processor that he had just been about to round the corner of, on his way to greet his Father before patrol.

Father had received his soulmark? And… was displeased? Robin's ears perked up.

"Look," Bruce snarled, slamming his hand down on the computer desk and whirling his chair around to face Jason head on.

"If you hadn't brought her back, she wouldn't even be my soulmate. I would have been happy with anyone else but her. Hell, I might have gotten my soulmark years ago if you hadn't interfered," Bruce snapped.

"You want to sit here and talk to me about arrogance, Jason, when you went and raised the fucking dead?"

Jason glared back at the glowering Bat.

"I wouldn't have had to raise the dead," Jason said in a low, lethal tone, "if you hadn't gotten her killed in the first place."

"Right, it's my fault because I fired her," Bruce snarled sarcastically. "I'm sorry, who was busy doing business with Black Mask during that whole fiasco?"

"It's a damned good thing I was," Jason hissed, "because he had her there for three days and you didn't even know she was missing. How much longer do you think she could've held out before giving up your identity, asshole?"

Damian cautiously peeked around the edge of the computer. He couldn't see his brother's eyes, but he felt certain that they were flashing green, because his ahki sounded a hairsbreadth away from pummeling their father.

Bruce and Jason were shouting at each other now, and Damian popped out of hiding when Jason abruptly stood to his feet and slammed his chair into the Batcomputer.

"Good evening, Father, ahki," Damian said politely, walking over as if he hadn't just overheard a near nuclear-level disaster.

"Oh - Damian," Bruce muttered, tearing his eyes away from his elder son to look distractedly at his youngest.

"Habibi," Jason mumbled, barely pulling himself back from what was surely about to be a fist to the jaw for Bruce.

"Are you ready for patrol, Father?" Damian asked him politely.

"You go ahead," Bruce said, clearing his throat. "I need to stay here and work on this case. Jason can give you a ride to the start of your route," Bruce added, giving Jason a sharp, menacing look.

"Very well, Father," Damian said calmly. "Shall we go, ahki?" he asked Jason.

"Yeah," Jason said tightly, still glaring at Bruce with a look that said that their conversation wasn't over.

As Red Hood's bike roared out of the cave, Bruce drew a shuddering breath and ran both hands over his face and through his hair.

Steph hadn't talked, had she? For three fucking days of torture. And Bruce had seen the wounds. And the blood. And held her hand as she died on Leslie's table.

And he'd been so eaten up by guilt, for so long, until he could hardly breathe at night and had become little more than a hollow shell of himself, burdened with the knowledge that he'd lost another Robin.

Bruce's eyes closed in pain as he thought back to Steph's sudden, grisly reappearance in the Batcave, her purple Spoiler outfit flapping around her like some demented form of graveclothes, and the eerie green of the Lazarus Pit flashing from her eyes as she'd attacked him, screaming accusations and flinging guilt and full of so much anger and rage and hatred that Bruce had hardly known what to do, as overwhelmed as he was at even seeing her alive in the first place.

And Jason had stood there watching the scene unfold, leaning against his bike and smoking a cigarette as his little resurrected Robin told Bruce in great detail, with punches that packed a great deal more power than before she'd died, about every single minute way that Batman and Bruce had failed her.

Bruce hadn't fought back, to his credit. He'd stood and taken the beating, only doing the bare minimum to defend himself.

But there was only so much a man could take, he reasoned to himself. Could he really be blamed for finally snapping and barking at Jason to come and put his pet zombie back on her leash?

Well….

Bruce sighed.

It wasn't like things had gotten better from there, either. Steph, like Jason, had insisted on running free and loose, refusing first and foremost to retire from the vigilante life like any sane formerly dead person should do.

No, she insisted on going straight back out there, but far be it from Steph to submit to the Bat's authority in Gotham. Like necromancer, like zombie, Bruce snarked to himself. Steph had the gall to run around as Spoiler completely independent of all things Bat, including Red Hood, until Babs, of all people, had finally decided to take the purple demon under her wing and turn her into Batgirl.

It irked Bruce to no end that Babs insisted that Batgirls didn't operate under Batman's authority, but their own, when he tried to argue with her about it.

"We're free agents," Babs had said breezily. "Always have been, always will be."

And Batman needed Oracle's services and couldn't afford to piss her off, so that was that.

But it added up to a hell of a lot of hatred and resentment in Bruce's heart for one Stephanie Brown, spoiled rotten Batgirl, at least in his own opinion.

But… she hadn't shared his identity. For three torturous days of agony that ended up killing her, Steph had protected Bruce.

And what had he ever done for her?

* * *

_**The Monstrosity** _

* * *

Bruce was suffering through his inevitable fall shopping trip to Bergman's with Alfred, numbly approving his butler's choices for Brucie Wayne's stylishly seasonal wardrobe, when his eye wandered to the women's section across the way, caught by a flash of purple.

Eggplant purple, to be precise. Such as Spoiler and Batgirl were oh so fond of wearing, much to the detriment of Gothamites' eyesight.

Bruce meandered over to the display of wool pea coats, curiously pulling out the eggplant atrocity that was criss-crossed with lighter lavender stripes of plaid. It was cut beautifully, of course, but it was absolutely hideous.

Steph would probably love it.

"Sir?" Alfred inquired behind Bruce's left shoulder.

"What size does Steph wear?" Bruce heard himself asking.

Alfred hummed in pleasure as he stepped up next to him and rifled through the rack, not bothering to look at whatever imaginary numbers the tags hopefully proclaimed.

"This should do nicely," Alfred said, pulling one out.

"Good," Bruce muttered.

He took it from Alfred and stalked over to a fawning attendant to ring his purchase up, leaving Alfred to deal with Brucie's bevy of expensively bland perfection.

"I need this delivered," Bruce said to the cashier, who immediately nodded and began snipping off the tags and producing swaths of tissue paper and a gift box.

"If you'd like to include a note, sir?" the commission based clerk beamed, offering a lovely linen textured card and an elegant fountain pen to Bruce.

Bruce took the writing materials and sighed. He stared blankly for a minute until, feeling pressured by the imminent conclusion of the coat's packaging, he quickly scrawled, "I thought you would like this. - B," and shoved it into the envelope.

"What address shall this go to, Mr. Wayne?" the clerk affably asked.

Bruce scrolled through his phone with clenched teeth.

* * *

Steph hopped up from her textbooks and the couch to answer the polite knock on her apartment door.

Cass hadn't said she was coming over, but she was the only one who knocked so politely. Jason pounded, Tim rapped, and Conner tapped out a syncopated beat.

"Oh!" Steph said as she opened the door to behold a posh delivery woman, standing there with arms full of a long, flat gift box with Bergman's elegant gold script beaming from the shiny black lid.

"Stephanie Brown?" the woman asked and Steph nodded, her brow wrinkled in confusion.

"Enjoy," the delivery woman beamed at her, handing over the package.

"Thank you," Steph stuttered, wondering what on earth she'd received and who it was from.

She'd never gotten a package before that wasn't tightly sealed in a shipping box, mailed from a dismal warehouse.

Tim and Conner were the only ones she knew who could possibly afford Bergman's (well, and might actually shop there. Jason wouldn't darken the fashionable boutique's doors no matter how much money Red Hood was rolling in).

Tim and Conner didn't usually go in for expensive gifts, though. They usually picked deeply personal, quirky kitsch for Steph. But maybe they had decided that a special present might cheer her up?

The thought made Steph smile and she turned to shut the door, noticing belatedly that the delivery woman was still standing there.

"Have a nice day…?" Steph said lamely as she swung the door shut, feeling a little creeped out.

Was she supposed to invite the woman in for coffee, or something? Rich people's worlds were so weird, Steph thought to herself as she laid the box out on her round dinette.

She lifted the lid off and unfolded the creamy tissue paper, which she couldn't help but notice was a highly superior quality to the kind that she stuffed in gift bags for birthdays and Christmas.

Steph drew in an awed gasp as she beheld the marvelous, fantastic, beautiful work of art in front of her eyes. A wool pea coat - she'd wanted one for so long, but they were so damn expensive and she didn't feel right hinting to Jason about it when she had a perfectly good puffer jacket - but the pea coat before her eyes was _plaid_ \- and _eggplant_ \- and had fancy buttons and intricately cut pockets and - she lifted open the breast to find luxurious purple silk lining - and Steph's breath came out in a soft, happy, sigh.

She moaned delightedly as she lifted the coat out and slid it on over her long-sleeved tee, sighing in relief at the impeccable fit. Enough room to move her shoulders freely, loose enough to go over fall sweaters, but trim enough to look flattering.

Steph's happy noises filled the apartment as she buttoned up the double-breast and scampered in her barefeet to the full-length mirror in her bedroom.

"Ohhhhh," she breathed out, twirling and preening and hardly believing how much more sophisticated and elegant and grown-up and rich and utterly fabulous she looked.

Conner and Tim were the _best_ , Steph thought to herself with a big smile. Conner must have picked it out. His taste was phenomenal.

In fact, there should have been a card, Steph realized. She strutted back to the gift box, sashaying her hips and modeling her hands in the pockets as she went.

And there was the card, fluttered down onto the floor in her excitement over getting her coat on. Steph bent down - and the coat fit marvelously for bending, the vents over the hips were just the right length - and she picked up the unsealed envelope, tugging the card out as she stood.

Her jaw dropped as she read the words and Steph fell limply into the nearest dining chair as she scanned the short missive again and again, not believing her eyes.

B… had… bought her a present? And not just any present, but the world's most amazing pea coat?

Steph's brain refused to process the incongruous information. Alfred must have done it, she reasoned, without telling Bruce.

But when Steph thought to look more carefully at the handwriting on the card, it was in fact the same penmanship that was scrawled across her hip. And Steph did not like at all the sudden rush of anxiety and shivers that wracked her body.

* * *

Bruce had stomped off to the Batcave as soon as he got home from his awful, no-good, very bad shopping trip, sulking like he did four times a year whenever Alfred forced him into clothes shopping.

Batman needed his dank, dark Batcave to wash away the live piano music and soft but clear lighting and toothpaste-ad-smiles that he'd had to endure for the last three hours. As he chugged down a cup of bitter, black coffee to wash away the champagne that Alfred had insisted he accept, he got a text alert on his phone.

From - Steph. Oh. Why were nerves suddenly fluttering in his belly? It wasn't like he cared if she liked the coat.

Hell, it said a lot about her if she _did_ like the godawful coat, and none of it good.

 _Thanks for the coat,_ he read.

Well - that was… anticlimactic.

 _You're welcome,_ he wrote back.

The read receipt popped up a second later, but the three little dots that indicated a message in progress failed to appear. So… that was that, Bruce guessed. Fine. Whatever. It wasn't like he was trying to make a point, or be nice, or anything stupidly sentimental like that.

He just maybe felt a little guilty over how much Steph had sacrificed to protect him. So if he wanted to buy her a stupid coat, that was only fair because Bruce owed Steph, he really did, and God knows she couldn't afford Bergman's.

Although why that knowledge nagged at his conscience, Bruce didn't want to think about. He'd done quite enough internal reflection for one day, thank you very much. Plus he'd had to go clothes shopping. Enough was enough.

* * *

"Ohmigod, Steph! Your coat!" Conner screeched that weekend when he and Tim picked her up to go out for dinner.

"Shut up!" Tim said in awe, pushing Steph's shoulder to force her into a twirl while she smiled proudly. "Where'd you get that from?" he asked her curiously.

"That's from Bergman's," Conner said reverentially, reaching out a fingertip to trace the edge of a welted pocket and not giving Steph a chance to answer.

"For real?" Tim said, giving Steph a funny look.

She blushed and stumbled over her words.

"Yeah, um… B sent it to me. I don't know why," she mumbled to the floor.

"Oh my God!" Conner squealed. "He likes you after all!"

The Kryptonian excitedly squeezed Tim's arm and jumped up and down in the hallway.

"No, he doesn't," Steph scoffed with bitter assurance. "He hasn't even talked to me. He just sent the coat."

"With a note?" Tim asked her eagerly.

"Yeah, but it didn't really say anything," Steph said.

"We'll be the judge of that," Conner said authoritatively. "Where is it?"

"No," Steph growled. "We're going to dinner. Come on."

"At least tell us what it said," Tim whined at her as Steph marched off towards the elevator.

"It said, 'I thought you'd like this,'" she grumbled back. "That's all."

"How'd he sign it?" Conner said seriously.

"B," Steph shrugged.

"No endearment?" Tim asked.

"No, dumbass," Steph said with growing frustration. "Because he doesn't care about me. He just bought me a damn coat. It's probably his way of dealing with his guilt over hating me, to pay me off. That's what rich people do, isn't it?" she snarked. "Pay to make their problems go away?"

Tim chewed on his lip, looking a little downcast at that suggestion.

"It's still a fabulous coat, though," Conner said after a glum minute.

"It is," Steph agreed with a sigh - and a tiny smile.

Because it really was the world's greatest coat. No matter who had sent it to her. Or why.

* * *

Bruce told himself he wasn't being a stalker. He was just curious, that's all. In a totally non-stalkery way. All he wanted to know was if Steph would wear the coat.

For research purposes. So he would know for the future just how dumb he'd been in buying it for her and so he could use that knowledge against himself to make absolutely, positively certain that he never did anything quite so ludicrously ridiculous again.

That was why Matches Malone was hunched over in a beat-up car on the curb a block up from Steph's apartment building since early Sunday morning on a chilly day in early October, waiting to see if Steph would appear, in or out of her purple monstrosity.

Bruce had gone through two thermoses of coffee and covertly peed in an alley an equal number of times before he was finally rewarded for his stakeout when a certain blonde skipped - she was _skipping_ \- out of the apartment complex, bouncing down the stairs with her hands snugged in the pockets of the most hideously ugly eggplant purple coat that had ever cursed the earth.

And if there was a little smile on Matches' face, well… that was stupid, too. He'd known she'd like it. Steph had terrible taste.

It was one of the reasons why he despised her.

* * *

_**The Magnificence** _

* * *

Bruce was exiting an investor lunch that Lucius had insisted he absolutely must attend, no excuses accepted, down at Bellissima's in the Diamond District. At least the food had been delicious, even if the conversation had made Bruce want to gouge his eyeballs out with a fork.

Honestly, he didn't know what the point was of Brucie Wayne even attending these damn things, when Lucius did all the talking. When he said as much to his CEO after Brucie had waved their investors off in their town car, grinning like a buffoon as he stood on the curb and waggled his fingers, Lucius gave Bruce a wry glance.

"You're a celebrity, Bruce," he said. "People like meeting the famous man whose name is on the building. It's a perk of investing in Wayne Corp to brush elbows with the great and goofy Brucie Wayne."

"So I'm basically Chuck E. Cheese," Bruce spluttered with great affront.

"Fraid so," Lucius grinned as their driver pulled up to the curb.

The older man got into the backseat first and Bruce was about to follow when something in the window of the florist's shop across the street caught his eye.

"You coming?" Lucius asked him when Bruce didn't get in.

"You go ahead," Bruce said, looking down. "I have some shopping to do."

He shut the door and waved good-bye to Lucius with significantly less pageantry than the investors had received before crossing over to the enticingly spooky Halloween display of flowers nestled amongst swaths of cobwebs and flickering LED candles.

"Good afternoon," the florist on duty beamed as Bruce entered the shop before stumbling and nearly tripping over their tongue.

"Oh, Mr. Wayne," the clerk said with big eyes. "What can I help you with, sir?" the curly haired David, according to his name tag, stuttered eagerly.

"You're discreet, right?" Bruce asked him menacingly.

"Sir?" David faltered.

"I won't find my recipient's name and address splashed across the tabloids… _David_?" Bruce growled in a very close approximation of the voice that Batman used when threatening criminals.

"No - no, sir," David babbled nervously. "Very discreet, sir," he panted out.

"In fact," David said, rallying, "if you pay with cash, we don't even need to make a record of who the order is from."

"Good," Bruce grunted. "I want the arrangement in the window."

"Yes, sir," David beamed.

He hesitated.

"Exactly as is?" he asked.

"Yes," said Bruce.

* * *

Bruce hadn't reached out to Steph again since unexpectedly gifting her with her pea coat several weeks ago.

Not that she'd expected him to. It was like she'd initially thought, Steph had glumly decided. Nothing more than a guilt offering. Because obviously B didn't want to try to talk to her, and that was fine. She didn't want to talk to him, either.

What could they say to each other, really, that would make their horrible situation any better?

The knock on her door was definitely not Cass, this time. Or Jason or Conner or Tim.

Steph tried to pretend that she didn't have butterflies in her stomach as she slowly approached the door.

"Oh, my gosh," she breathed out, her eyes going wide, when her door opened to a massive bouquet of dark purple roses that was so big it hid the face of the delivery person.

"Stephanie Brown?" someone asked from the midst of the foliage.

"Yes," Steph said, her eyes going wondrous and delighted as she reached a finger forward to touch the googly-eyed felt bats that were littered throughout the roses, stuck into the floral foam with metal stakes.

"Do you need some help with it, ma'am?" the disembodied voice asked patiently, and Steph snapped back to attention.

"Oh! Sorry," she said quickly, bending down to grab the heavy orange glass vase. "I think I can get it," she said. "Thank you," Steph called over her shoulder as she maneuvered the flowers into her apartment, kicking the door shut behind her.

Steph did not mean to, but she could not help it. The biggest _squeee_ came out of her throat and she jumped up and down like a little kid, in awe at the massive purple and orange and black display. The glitter pumpkins mixed in were cute, too, but OMG, Steph thought.

The _Bats._ B had gotten her purple flowers with bats.

She eagerly grabbed for the card, but her heart fell a little bit when all it had was B's first initial. No note.

Steph sighed and tried to tell herself she shouldn't feel disappointed. She hadn't been expecting B to reach out to her ever again, if she was being honest, and it wasn't like anything was possible between them, given how much they disliked each other.

A coat and some flowers didn't change B's personality, or lack thereof.

But, still. A wispy tendril of melancholy longing wove through Steph's soul as she snapped a photo on her camera of the flowers.

* * *

Bruce was eating dinner at the manor with Alfred and Damian when the text came.

He pulled his phone out to check it against the backdrop of Alfred's chiding tutts and Damian's offended glare, barely noticing his family's reactions, because Steph had sent him a photo of flowers that looked three times as big as they had in the shop when posed on her tiny kitchen counter.

And… she had included a caption, Bruce saw with pleasure.

_THANK YOU! I love them!_

Damian and Alfred exchanged glances as the tiniest of smiles curled up the edges of Bruce's mouth while he tapped out a response.

 _I'm glad,_ he wrote before hitting send.

Bruce wanted to see if the three little dots of hope would appear, but Alfred was clearing his throat in a suspiciously significant fashion.

"Alfred?" Bruce said, reluctantly tearing his gaze away from his phone screen.

"Some positive news, sir?" Alfred asked with a raised eyebrow.

Bruce realized with a small shock that Damian was giving him a piercingly intense stare and Alfred looked far too smug for his own good.

"A small break on a case," Bruce growled.

"Mm-hm," Alfred hummed with not an ounce of belief.

Damian was still watching him like a hawk, but Bruce couldn't help it - he glanced down at his phone, willing the wished-for dots of an incoming message to appear.

But there was nothing.

* * *

Cass and Jason exchanged furtive glances behind her back when Steph told them who the flowers were from, despite the fact that Steph made sure to reinforce the fact that B had not included a real note and had only sent her a scant two-word text in response to her enthusiastic thanks.

"He tries," Cass signed hopefully to Jason, who nodded.

Maybe his little chat with Daddy Bats had not been for naught.

* * *

A week later, Bruce found himself strolling around the Diamond District for a good forty-five minutes before he could convince himself to approach the shop that was the sole reason for his trip downtown.

"Who are you?" Bruce glared angrily at the perky clerk named Summer. "Where's David?" he growled out.

Summer's eyes, which hadn't properly shrunk yet, blinked twice.

"He's, uh, he's -"

"Is he or isn't he here?" Bruce snapped in exasperation.

"Is there a problem?" a voice asked from behind the curtain separating the larger workroom from the display area, and then Bruce's proven-discreet florist was thankfully appearing.

"Oh! Mr. Wayne," David said, blinking himself before plastering a smile on his face.

"Summer, I got this customer," he said gently, pushing her towards the back and firmly sliding the curtain closed behind her.

"She's going to talk," Bruce said in irritation, his BatSenses tingling to the point of a stress headache.

"If your delivery could wait until tomorrow, I could make it up myself with all my other ones and put it under a fake name for the records," David offered.

"Ok, fine," Bruce huffed, because he really didn't want to have to find a new florist - not that he was planning to make this a habit, or anything - but, well, just in case he was - he didn't want Steph's name leaked to the press, and David had clearly kept his mouth shut last week.

Better to keep the circle of potential snitches as small as possible, Batman thought to himself, so he knew who to beat the shit out of in case his secret got splattered across the tabloids.

"Did you have something specific in mind?" David was asking him and Bruce tried to refocus his attention to the florist.

"She likes purple," Bruce muttered, rubbing his forehead.

"Ah," David said with a smile, leading Bruce over to a refrigerated case to begin going over their different options.

Bruce left him with twice as big a tip as last week.

* * *

Steph hadn't been able to bring herself to throw her roses away yet, even though they were good and faded at this point. At least she could keep the little bat and pumpkin decorations, she thought to herself. And the orange vase, she could fill that up with candy for the trick-or-treaters in a few weeks, she decided, once she'd scrubbed it out.

In fact, she could stick some of the bats and pumpkins inamongst the candy, and that would look pretty fabulous. Although then she'd have some trouble getting the candy out -

The unexpected knocks at her door were starting to become a thing, Steph realized with her heart beating a little faster.

The most gorgeous flower arrangement greeted her, easily as big as last week's, but this one was a cacophony of colors and textures. Purple roses from eggplant to lavender were woven throughout larger flowers with rings and stripes of purple and white and frilly tendrils that looked like something Conner would have designed. Or worn.

"What are those?" Steph asked the delivery girl in wonder, peeking through the foliage to find her.

"Those are dahlias," the woman beamed. "Aren't they fantastic? They come in so many different varieties."

"They're amazing," Steph said. "I've never seen anything like them."

"Not too many people grow flowers here in Gotham," the woman sighed as she hoisted the huge vase into Steph's waiting arms.

"There's not a lot of grass," Steph pointed out, but the woman shrugged.

"You can grow a lot of things in pots," she said. "You enjoy these, hon," she added before turning to walk away.

Steph couldn't stop her smiles as she carefully placed her new flowers next to her faded, old ones.

"I guess we can finally say good-bye," she said to the dead roses, unable to tear her eyes away from flowers more magnificent than anything her Narrows-raised mind could possibly have conceived of.

Steph had only known concrete her entire life and her extent of floral knowledge was roses and maybe tulips and daffodils, which the grocery store usually had in the spring.

How could anything so breathtakingly beautiful even exist in the world, Steph wondered to herself as she looked in awe at the frills and furls and patterns of color found in a single dahlia bloom.

* * *

_B! These are insane! How can something like this even be real?_

Bruce felt his heart race when he saw Steph's text. As he glanced down at the photo, he noted that David had really outdone himself. Whatever the fuck he'd put in the mix had worked really well, because Steph wasn't wrong. Those were some seriously glamorous flowers.

For the first time, though, Bruce found himself hesitating before sending a reply.

Brucie would have used Steph's opening as an opportunity to flirt, but Bruce wasn't trying to flirt with Steph, right? He was just… sending his soulmate flowers. Once in awhile. Because he felt kind of bad about not being able to have a relationship with her due to the utter atrociousness of her personhood.

Besides, he owed her.

If flowers made Steph happy, that was a little thing Bruce could do for her, but it didn't mean he wanted to date her. Far from it. He just wanted to feel a little better inside and if his gifts helped Steph feel a little better, too, good. It was a shit situation for both of them and despite how much Bruce couldn't stand her, he could be mature enough to admit that it wasn't Steph's fault that she was his soulmate. (It was Jason's.)

 _I'm glad you like them,_ Bruce wrote back.

At her apartment, Steph screamed in frustration and kicked the kitchen cabinets.

* * *

_**The Progression** _

* * *

Was it Bruce's fault that the gift shop in the lobby of Wayne Enterprises happened to have the softest lavender colored cashmere blanket? And a bat-shaped box of gourmet chocolates?

It was traditional to give presents on Halloween, Bruce thought, and no one should be sad and alone on a holiday.

* * *

"Has he been sending flowers every week?" Tim asked around a mouthful of jelly bellies, in between trips to the door to reward trick-or-treaters.

"Yeah," Steph said with some embarrassment, turning a little red.

"The chocolates are from him, too?" Jason asked with a sharp glint in his eye, noticing the bat box propped up against the latest floral display.

"Uh huh," Steph mumbled, not mentioning that the blanket over her knees that she couldn't stop running through her fingers was also from B.

"Cashmere is very expensive," Conner whispered in her ear, though, with a wink.

"Shut up," Steph grumbled, turning even redder. "He still won't even talk to me. I literally haven't seen him once on patrol - not once - since right after my birthday."

Cass narrowed her eyes as she studied Steph. Her friend didn't seem as opposed to the idea of Bruce as she'd been immediately after her soulmark had appeared, but Batman could hardly hope to make progress with his Batgirl if he didn't find the courage to actually speak to her at some point instead of only sending gifts, as thoughtful as they were.

Jason leaned forward under the pretense of snagging more Reese's pieces.

"My thoughts exactly, babe," he murmured in Cass's ear.

The barest press of her knee against his told him that she heard.

* * *

Batman's blood ran cold when he heard Oracle's call for backup for Batgirl on the comms.

"Black Bat and I are tangled up at the docks," he heard Red Hood's immediate response with gunfire in the background.

"I'm across town but I can head over," Red Robin piped in.

"Robin and I are closest," Batman growled, already running over rooftops with his heart pounding in his throat and fear churning in his gut.

She'd be fine. She'd be fine. Steph had the Lazarus Pit flowing through her veins, for Pete's sake. Or through her cells. DNA. Lifeforce. Whatever.

There was no reason at all for Batman to be panicking, he tried to tell himself, as Robin met him in a yellow blur and the two of them leapt and grappled between buildings as they raced towards Batgirl, who had unexpectedly unearthed a rather large nest of Two-Face's goons in what was supposed to be a simple rescue from a house fire.

Batgirl's shoulder was covered in blood when Batman and Robin burst onto the scene, but Bruce couldn't immediately tell if it was hers or the henchmen's, because despite being vastly outnumbered against machine gun toting perps, Batgirl was kicking ass with a fury that belied any injuries, flinging batarangs and trash can lids and flipping into kicks to the head and vicious elbows to the throat as her eyes glowed green.

"Flank them from the end of the alley," Batman ordered Robin, who nodded sharply and ran off across the roofs while Batman launched himself into the midst of the fray, ending up back to back with Batgirl as they fought off and knocked out criminal after criminal.

The ones who tried to flee when they realized that reinforcements had arrived were met by a whirling flurry of yellow, red, and green, as Robin disabled crook after crook with blows that were technically more vicious than necessary, but Batman knew in his heart that Robin wouldn't be getting reprimanded for it tonight.

When the alley was filled with heaving, groaning, and out cold henchmen, Robin quickly began securing their wrists behind them with zip ties while a nervous Batman pulled Batgirl into the light to assess her injuries.

"I'm fine," she said, although she hissed when his finger probed at the tear in her suit.

"This needs stitches," Bruce said with concern. "And the bullet's still in there," he said.

Steph grunted in a very Bruce like manner, which caused Damian to lift his head and give her a curious look tinged with amusement, although he hid his smile as he bent down and continued cuffing the villains.

"We'll take care of this back in the Batcave," Batman told Batgirl, clicking the remote on his gauntlet that recalled the Batmobile, but Batgirl was pulling away from him with irritation.

"Red Hood can handle it," Steph said, making to grapple away, but Bruce reached out and forced her wrist down.

"He and Black Bat are tied up at the docks," the Bat growled.

"It can wait," Batgirl said, shrugging away from him.

"Get in the car," Batman said to her as the Batmobile pulled up, but to his utter shock and intense annoyance, Batgirl was already grappling away into the night.

"Tt," Damian clicked.

Batman's growl increased in volume.

"You go back home, Robin," he said to his junior sidekick. "I'm going to go deal with Batgirl."

Bruce heard Damian's cackle as Batman grappled after Batgirl, but he pretended that he hadn't.

* * *

_**The Conclusion** _

* * *

Back in her apartment, Steph had already peeled the top of her suit down and was rummaging around in her bathroom medicine cabinet when a dark shadow fell across the doorway.

"I told you to get in the car," Batman said angrily.

"I don't take orders from you," Steph said back just as angrily, giving him a hard stare for a long second before turning back to her search for forceps.

Bruce sighed and pulled his gauntlets off before lifting his cowl and tossing it onto the floor.

"Let me," he said, moving to take the forceps from Steph.

"What did I just say?" Steph snapped, yanking the tool away from him. "Stop ordering me around."

Bruce glared at her.

"You're injured," he said.

"You're bossy and controlling," Steph retorted.

Bruce heaved a long sigh up to the heavens, with accompanying eye roll, as Steph pulled down the rubbing alcohol and some cotton balls.

He watched in silence as Steph sterilized the forceps before gritting his teeth and grinding out, "Can I _please_ get the bullet out for you?"

"Well, since you asked so nicely," Steph snarked, finally handing the tool over.

"Sit down," Bruce told her, only catching himself at Steph's sharp look. "Please," he added with a grunt.

Steph sniffed but deigned to sit on the edge of the tub, leaving room for Bruce to sit on the toilet lid so he could access her wound.

"Why do you make everything so difficult?" he couldn't help but ask her right before he went probing for the bullet.

"Me?" Steph squawked. "You're the control freak, mister."

She hissed and screwed her eyes shut as Bruce fished for the bullet, trying to get a grasp on it.

"Sorry," he murmured before finally getting a grip and slowly tugging it out.

He dropped it in the trash can and grabbed the squares of gauze that Steph had already laid out on the sink, pressing them hard into the gushing wound.

"Hold that," Bruce commanded Steph without thinking as he stood and began rooting through her cabinet for a suture kit, which he hoped to hell that she had.

"Again with the orders," Steph muttered.

Bruce let out a very irritated sigh.

"I'm Batman," he said to her. "What do you expect?"

Whatever Steph was expecting was a mystery, but what Bruce was not at all expecting was the glint of sadness that lit her eyes before she glanced away, or the way that his heart suddenly twisted in reaction to it.

"You do realize," Bruce tried to say patiently as he sat down and began to stitch Steph up without lidocaine, since she apparently had none, "that stopping to say please and thank you and making gentle requests will get people killed when we're out in the field?"

"I'm not your Bat," Steph muttered, refusing to meet his eyes. "You don't get to boss me around."

And Bruce supposed that he deserved that, given all the ways that he'd failed Steph before, but the knife-like pain in his gut at Steph's words was unexpectedly hard to handle.

He finished stitching her up in silence.

Once Bruce had the ends of the thread snipped off and the extra blood dabbed off and the trash thrown out, he stood, picking up his gloves and cowl from the floor as he left the bathroom.

"You can call me if it gets worse during the night," he said over his shoulder as he walked towards the living room with Steph trailing behind him.

"It won't," Steph said. "The Pit will take care of it."

"Ok," Bruce said, turning back to glance at her before moving to put his cowl back on.

The regretful misery that Steph saw in his eyes echoed what she felt in her chest and without thinking, Steph said, "Are you really never gonna talk to me?"

Bruce paused with his cowl midway to his head, looking like a pickpocket caught with his hand in the purse.

"What… did you want to talk about?" B said slowly.

Steph huffed out a frustrated breath that bordered on tears.

"You send me flowers every week!" she said.

"Yes," B said, wondering what the hell else he could say to that.

"And presents!" Steph said, although there had only been a few presents, the coat and the blanket and the chocolates, but who was counting, Bruce thought to himself.

"Yes," he said again, feeling completely out of his depth and wishing to God he had some clue how to handle this situation, but all his years of Batman and Brucie Wayne combined had failed to prepare him for how to talk to his completely incompatible soulmate.

"Why?" Steph said to him, blinking rapidly. "Why are you doing all this, B, if you're never gonna talk to me?"

"I don't know," he mumbled, looking to the floor and running a hand through the back of his hair.

"Great," Steph said sarcastically, turning away from him. "Fantastic. Wonderful chat. We should do it again sometime."

"Steph," B said urgently, reaching out to grasp her wrist with his still-bare hand.

"What?" she snapped, only half-turning to look back at him.

Bruce didn't mean to kiss her. He really didn't. But Steph looked sad and Bruce felt sad and he didn't know what else to do to keep her from storming off all mad and even more sad and his lips were on hers and his tongue in her surprised mouth before he realized what he was doing.

And apart from an initial surprised squeak, Steph didn't seem opposed to being kissed, if the way she was leaning into it and wrapping her good arm around his back and opening up to him was any indication.

* * *

 _Holy fuck_ , Steph thought to herself before rolling with it.

Hell, they had to break the ice somehow, right? If she and B were ever going to move past their soulmate stalemate.

They always taught kids in sex ed that soulmate sex was incomparably better than unsoulbonded sex, but Steph had privately believed that was a fictional deterrent made up to keep teenagers in line.

She'd sure as hell enjoyed sex with Dean, after all, even if it did get her in a heap of trouble.

But something was different about kissing B and it wasn't just his technique, although that was damn impeccable. Kissing B was like drinking liquid fire that was barreling down past her belly to her pussy and through her toes, and it made her soulmark burn and her skin crawl like an addict's until she was feverishly scrabbling for patches of B's bare skin which were barely accessible.

"Take your suit off," Steph panted, pulling away from B's lips to shove frantically at her boots.

His eyes glinted as his hands quickly worked undoing clasps and secret latches until his armor was falling away into a puddle at his feet and he was helping Steph out of hers when her injured shoulder slowed her down until he was scooping her up, clad only in their underwear and sighing with her in relief as they made skin contact while he carried her back to the bedroom.

"We're still gonna have to talk, you know," Steph grumbled as B laid her down in bed and carefully helped her work her sports bra off.

"Can it wait until afterwards?" B asked her with a pleading grin as he tossed the bra aside and reached his hands back out towards her sides, desperate to feel her against his palms again, because Steph felt like no one he had ever touched.

"It can wait," Steph mumbled against his lips as they found hers and she lost herself in the swirl of electricity and glitter that seemed to make up her soulmate.

* * *

It should have been awkward afterwards, lying with B in her bed, but Steph felt too blissed out to be bothered by it.

B's hand was tracing idle circles on her back as Steph lay with her bad shoulder carefully propped up against him.

"I don't know what to say to you," B finally said into the comfortable silence. "I've never been much good at conversation, you know," he said. "And there's so much history between us, most of it bad…" he trailed off.

"You've never liked me," Steph said. "Why don't you tell me about that."

B let out a soft groan.

"It hadn't been that many years since I'd lost Jason before you began popping up around Gotham as Spoiler," he said.

"I couldn't even keep my own Robin safe, and here you were, completely untrained and running around into danger unsupervised with no armor or weapons or backup…"

"Oh," Steph said quietly.

"Yeah, _oh_ ," B responded sarcastically. "How terrible of Batman to feel worried about another kid ending up dead on his watch."

"I wasn't your responsibility," Steph protested but B gave her a look.

"Everyone in Gotham is my responsibility," he said, and Steph couldn't really argue with that, because wasn't that how she felt, too? As Batgirl?

She sighed.

"You could have trained me better as Robin, then. And not fired me," she said.

"I could have," B surprised her by agreeing. "But you disobeyed orders and all I could remember was Jason, not that he was to blame for Sheila and Joker, but he disobeyed me and died and I didn't want to go through that again," he said.

"But then you did anyway," Steph muttered.

"Yeah," B said heavily. "I'm sorry, Steph," he finally said, for the first time since she’d come back, drawing Steph's shocked eyes up to his.

"I started the gang wars," she tried to say, but B was shaking his head.

"I lost track of you," he said, swallowing hard and blinking away tears. "Jason was right. I should have realized you'd been captured. I should have saved you."

"Yeah," Steph whispered. "Well. No changing the past, B."

"Tell that to Jason," Bruce grumbled, making Steph smile. "Are you angry that he resurrected you?" Bruce asked her curiously.

Steph hesitated.

"Not at first," she said. "I was grateful. But then, when I got my soulmark…"

"I can imagine," Bruce said dryly.

"Oh, can you?" Steph gently snarked at him, getting a light swat to her butt back.

"Why do you think we're soulmates?" Bruce asked her curiously some time later. "We don't seem to have anything in common."

"I've been wondering that, too," Steph said, chewing her lip. "I googled first-questions-to-ask-your-soulmate, just in case we ever might, you know, actually talk."

"Very proactive," Batman murmured. "What's the first one?"

"What are the three most important things in your life?" Steph asked him.

B thought for a second.

"Gotham, Batman, and my family," he answered.

Steph made a soft choking noise.

"Really?" she asked him faintly.

"Maybe not in that order," B said to her. "Why?"

"Those are mine, too," Steph said in wonder. "Except it's Batgirl, you know, and my friends are my family, so them."

Bruce shifted to his side to look at Steph more intently.

"The three most important things in your life are your found family, Gotham, and Batgirl?" he asked her slowly.

"Yeah," Steph whispered.

"Maybe we're not so different, after all," B said thoughtfully.

"Maybe not," Steph said back, her eyes melting into his as B lowered his mouth and began kissing her again.

* * *

"Oh, EW."

B and Steph woke a few hours later to the sound of a genuinely horrified voice coming from the vicinity of the window.

"Dude. Steph. Next time you're gonna fuck my dad, put a towel on the windowsill or something," Jason said, making loud retching noises as he turned away and rubbed vigorously at his eyes.

"What are you even doing here?" Steph sleepily mumbled while the Bat underneath her began to growl.

"I thought you might be hurt and need patching up," Red Hood said without turning around. "But now I gotta go get an eye transplant. Way to reward me for being a good samaritan, Blondie. Ew, ew, ew," he repeated.

"No, don't look," Jason cried suddenly, lunging forward to pull Cass, who was creeping in through the window, against his chest to protect her sight.

"My dad's in bed with Steph," Jason groaned against the back of Cass's head. "Save yourself. Avert your eyes from the horror."

"So. Funny," Steph snarked at him from deep under the covers.

"Who was it again who invaded my Batcave to scream at me about giving Steph a chance?" Bruce's voice drifted over to him.

"Jason," Steph said in surprise. "You did that?"

"Um," he mumbled as Cass slowly lifted her head up from its cozy perch on his chest to regard him with a sweet smile.

"He did that," Bruce growled.

"Thank you?" Steph said to Jason, a little smile forming on her lips when she decided that maybe she wasn't super upset, after all, at her friend's interference.

"Way to repay me," Jason grumbled as he pushed Cass back towards the window. "Next time, don't forget the towel," he warned as he followed Black Bat back into the night.

"Next time," Steph said with satisfaction to her soulmate when the interlopers were gone.

"Next time, I'm booby-trapping the damn window," B said back.

* * *

"Ohmygodohmygodohmygod!" Conner squealed to Jason.

"Tell us _everything,"_ Tim said, dragging Jason and Cass from the fire escape into their apartment.

"If I told you everything, you'd vomit," Jason complained.

" _I_ wouldn't," Conner said under his breath, thinking of a certain DILF.

* * *

"Your father's intention was to follow Miss Stephanie home and attend to her wounds?" Alfred asked Damian when Robin returned to the Batcave sans Batman.

"Yes," Damian nodded. "He was most concerned about her very minor injury. I expect that he will finally cease his foolishness and lay claim to his soulmate."

"One can only hope," Alfred nodded. "I trust that you will not be nearly so foolhardy, my lad, when you receive your soulmark one day."

"Tt," said Damian. "Indeed I shall not. If I am cursed with an inferior soulmate, I will kill them at once and free myself from their shackles instead of wallowing in depression like my Father."

"Master Damian, your wisdom once again astounds me," Alfred said.

"As it should," Damian mumbled to himself as he took his seat at the Batcomputer to begin compiling his report.

* * *

_The End_

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> There’s so much more to this AU and story -  
> Part 2 is “Love is a One-Eyed Monster” featuring Sladick (not underage), set several years before this story. 
> 
> Part 3 is “Fate is a Green-Eyed Monster” which goes back and forth in time a little bit, starting with Steph’s death, Jason’s determined not-having-it reaction, TimKon discovering they’re soulmates, and that rarest of rare pairs, JayCass! (Cass isn’t Bruce’s kid or part of the Batfam). Also, loads more Sladick following the storyline of Part 2. 
> 
> Fanfiction writers are thirsty vampires and comments are our lifeblood. 🧛🩸😁  
> (But if you are mean, we will cut a bitch. Cuz we are vampires rawr 🦇)
> 
> You can follow me on Tumblr as River9Noble. Come say hi!
> 
> And do check out my other stories - Lotsa Batman and JaySteph and rarepairs abound, plus tons of my favorite Bby Damian, that ridiculous child ❤️💚.


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